Sunday Summary, 1 December 2013
What you missed this week
Welcome to Looking Up’s Sunday Summary — a quick recap of what you missed this week in the world above our heads, both on Medium and elsewhere on the web.
On Looking Up
It’s been a hell of a week for ISON, the comet that we profiled last week. After 4.5 billion years of floating around deep space on the periphery of the solar system, ISON took a dive into the fiery embrace of the Sun. Somehow, despite the intense solar heat and gravity, something survived the journey. Here’s the whole story.
We also took a critical eye to a campaign comparing climate change to atomic bombs. It’s a really bad idea, basically, because it both fuels accusations of alarmism from skeptics, and fails to provide the necessary context for people to understand what’s going on. There are much better ways to get people to understand why climate change is a threat to modern society.
In early 2014, we’ll be able to get a radically new viewpoint on Earth thanks to a pair of cameras that have launched to the International Space Station. Canadian company Urthecast will provide nearly-live video footage of the surface of our planet, like Google Earth on steroids.
That viewpoint may change us, if the experiences of astronauts are anything to go by. This twenty-minute short film examines how the perspectives of people who’ve seen our planet from space are altered on their return. “Common features of the experience are a feeling of awe for the planet, a profound understanding of the interconnection of all life, and a renewed sense of responsibility for taking care of the environment,” explains the short films’s website.
Nasa announced this week that it wants to hitch a lift to the Moon from a commercial company to grow some plants — something of a departure from its usual approach. The result may become one of the cheapest missions it’s ever put together, but also one of the most useful for our long-term prospects as a species.
Finally, we shared a few stunning images this week. This shot of the robot arm on the ISS releasing a trio of cubesats looks like a mother waving farewell to her children. And we put together our favourite images of star trails, compiled from multiple shots of the sky taken over a period of several hours, as the constellations pass by above.
The Best of the Rest
Elsewhere on the internet, we loved this piece on the Guardian from Helen Czerski on what monitoring weather and climate on research ships in the middle of the ocean is like. “In the shower, you have to chase the shower flow around, because it keeps falling in different directions,” she explains. A fascinating look into the life of a sky scientist.
We also liked BBC science editor David Shukman’s explanation of why China is so fixated on the Moon, especially as regional rival India looks towards Mars. It comes down to three factors, he says: “National prestige, the quest for technological prowess and the desire to harness all available natural resources.”
Meanwhile, the other major space player in the region, Japan, has a mad plan to supply the world with energy from a giant solar power plant on the Moon. Nicholas Tufnell explains the scheme on Wired UK, saying: “The Moon-based power station will work by initially establishing an array of solar cells that will extend like a belt along the entire 11,000km lunar equator.” Exactly the kind of project we all hoped the 21st century would bring.
Finally, for those of you who want a simple but interesting project to work on next year, Andrew Webster on The Verge explains how to turn a regular paper plane into a smartphone-controlled drone. A Kickstarter project to make that happen has exceeded its target overwhelmingly, so look out for more details next summer.
Looking Up is a collection on Medium that offers a home for those obsessed with the world above our heads. It’s curated by@duncangeere. If you enjoyed any of these articles, please click the “recommend” button below, and if you want more, then click the “follow” button to make sure you don’t miss anything we publish in the future.
